Pray the Lord My Soul to Keep
by PhoenixWormwood137
Summary: "Jimmy Novak, you love to pray, am I right? Would you like to hear me pray to my father?" • pre-rapture.


_I'm praying._

_You are?_

I realize how firmly I have been holding him down.

Suffocation equals silence equals hell. Divide by righteousness. Divide by virtue, virtue, virtue, error - Jimmy Novak, please stop thinking.

I hold his hands to his head, his fingers crumpling and curling and pressed into his hair. I have a headache from the math. I've triggered a vessel reaction, which is not very allowed, I shouldn't have let him out. I am not allowed to bleed into the body like a creature with fluids. I am not dust and I do not get caught in lungs. I am not here to talk to the vessel, I am here to bring glory and honour hallelujah, and I can't do that very well, not very well, if I become fascinated by humanity, if I stick to the vessel and let it share my work.

Control is for angels. Choking is for human beings.

Divide by righteousness.

_Jimmy Novak, you love to pray, am I right? Would you like to hear me pray to my father?_

I am close enough to feel him grow warm, soul bubbling metallic and multicoloured and full of adoration. He is excited. The emotion is incredible. I pull him closer, but I don't suffocate him, I just sense him, I simply slide over his solid light-ray surfaces, not very allowed but very right.

_I am excited too_, I offer.

_You don't_ feel _excited._

He reaches out a tendril and brushes against me. I freeze.

Jimmy Novak doesn't know the power, the illegality of what he is doing as he leaks into me, spreading filtered beams through my being, like light into deep water. He is attempting to perceive and know me, which is not his place.

I want to back away, fly, get out. But there is nowhere to go, I am trapped in this clay-knit animal and the soul stuck inside with me is turning on the rules and regulations, violating sub-statement b5three-million (which I have never read), not being submissive and scared, but trying to understand the seraph storming in its skin.

_Don't do that, _I say. He feels strange so close.

_You don't feel excited, _he says again, withdrawing. I am entirely unsettled, I don't have to have emotions to be that way (although I think there is too much heart involved in this particular sensation). It is as though Jimmy Novak has tampered with my wiring somehow.

_I don't require emotion to serve God,_ I snap. _You are supposed to be submissive, Jimmy Novak. It's risky to even let you wake up for a few short minutes. Don't make me change my mind._

_Sorry for hurting you,_ he says.

I feel surprise and sadness.

Not the kind of surprise where I graph something and the shape is different than I thought. Not the kind of sadness that comes when I am unable to perform a function.

These are feelings.

I shake myself inside his vessel, withdrawing into myself more than before.

Jimmy Novak, please stop thinking.

_Quiet down_, I say_. Do you want to hear me pray or not?_

I don't even want to pray anymore, not when I am in this vulnerable state and may be subjected to feelings any second (the thought itself gives me a sensation of dread and defiance, which I stamp down desperately). But his soul is still glowing in anticipation, and I can't possibly disappoint that. It would be unrighteous, unkind. It would make me regretful.

An hour before, I landed his body in Washington, DC, and I have been sitting in a park, under a cherry tree which is just prior to the blossoming stage. I pay attention to physicality, now, I push his soul backwards a little bit and take complete control of his body, fold his hands in his lap, slightly loosen his tight shoulders and straight back.

I mean to be calm, I don't mean to be affectionate. The two both happen as I gently touch his soul again. _Here._

I close his eyes.

The first part of the prayer is in enochian. I don't enjoy these prayers much, I do them daily, constantly. I keep it within my being, not using his mouth for the repeating, shuffling sounds.

I petition, I ask for the right to speak to God. I list my recent good deeds, I add them up in my head and find myself worthy. (I blatantly ignore the sins I am current committing by communing with my vessel so fully. I am worthy. At least, I have to believe it for now. I can descend into self-hate, I mean self-reprimand, later. But for now, I have to talk with my father.)

I slip into English to finish this part of the prayer and start another, the better part, the more rare section. I start to use Jimmy Novak's mouth, letting the human sounds roll off of his tongue.

"Jehova, Yahweh, mighty to save. Hide not thy face from me."

Awe, more than the defaulted, calculated awe, washes over me.

It's Jimmy, but I can't possibly withdraw now. I love this feeling. I love it.

"Abba," I say, treading the line terribly close to blasphemy. I am an angel. God is my father - not my papa, not my daddy, not my abba. But Jimmy is smiling with his whole soul, so much that he is bleeding back into his body and the lips that we share are parting in a grin.

"Hear me and hear this vessel," I say. Jimmy's voice is trembling. Is that me? "Really, father, we are both vessels for you to use as you will ... I know I have no right to draw near you, I know I am not worthy ..." Suddenly it's not a formality, I feel a smoky curl of shame in my grace, and it stops me in my tracks, breathless.

_But I know you are merciful. _Jimmy continues for me.

His hands are trembling, and that is me.

"I miss you," I say suddenly. Jimmy communicates confusion. I myself am confused, this is not what I came to say, but it's more honest than my intended prayer. "I miss you so badly, abba, father." Waves of white sadness are washing over me. They are mine. Jimmy feels them coming from my being and communicates more surprise, more confusion.

"Come back," I beg. "How much longer do I have to look for you and not find you? How much longer must I go around knowing you are everywhere, and not feeling you anywhere?"

Jimmy is trying to be comforting now. The emotions inside me are raging, now, it is very dangerous. It is erratic. I am scared of myself, but I am cutting Jimmy off automatically, and I don't know how to let him into my whirlwind. And I don't want to. He might get hurt.

"Tell me how to get to you!" I cry. "I can't do this anymore."

It hurts. Oh, it hurts so, so badly, and I realize this blinding flash of pain is not foreign to me after all. It is what I am always. I am simply allowing it to bubble to the surface, to dominate the horizon and be recognized.

"Ahh …"

I'm holding his head in his hands again, squeezing his eyes shut, curling his body in my own pain.

"Castiel! Castiel, it's okay, it's okay."

Jimmy is using his own voice. He loosens his body, clasps his hands gently together and sits up. "Castiel, please, don't be so sad."

_I can't help it_, I tell him. I feel as if I will snap under pressure.

"Shh, Castiel." His voice is incredibly gentle. "Have faith."

_Who are you to tell me to have faith? You are a human. You live in blindness. _You_ are having faith in _me_. I _know_ God is gone. I _know_ my father has left. Please go back to sleep, Jimmy Novak. Leave me to mourn._

"I can leave you, if that's what you want. But, Castiel, emotions are complicated. Despair is easy. Hope is better."

I feel hesitant._ I have not heard my father's voice for six hundred and fifty two billion, eight hundred and twenty three million, one hundred and ninety nine thousand, five hundred and twenty years. Not in my entire existence._

"And I'm trapped inside my own skin with a crazy angel." He smiles slightly. "Read the psalms, you might feel better. It helped me sometimes. King David had some crap happen to him, and he was called a man after God's own heart."

_Angels aren't supposed to read the Bible. It's for human beings._

"And you're going to listen to that rule?"

_… I already have the entire thing memorized._

"That's my angel."

He withdraws, gently handing control of the body back to me.

"...Thank you," I say.

_Take care of me, alright? _His soul smiles softly, and he slips to the back, into proper, sanctioned unconsciousness.

It's one of the last things I ever hear him say.


End file.
